Salamis

by Christian Cameron

  Themistocles looked at me across the fire. ‘The Persians use our petty quarrels against us,’ he said. ‘And there is always Persian gold to help the cause of treason. It is part of their way of conquering and holding an empire.’ He was speaking aloud, but he was thinking – I could see it.

  So could Cimon.

  ‘You aren’t proposing we sell ourselves to the Persians,’ he asked. His voice was light, but I could hear the steel in it.

  Themistocles shot to his feet. ‘By Zeus, lord of kings and free men, I propose the very thing – and tonight, at that.’

  There is a point at which a mad, bad plan is merely a good, if ­daring, plan. It is a tribute to our desperation that when Themistocles outlined his notion, there was almost no argument.

  My part in the plan was simple. And I knew the way, and I had a triakonter on my part of the beach, ready for sea.

  Walking back over the headland, Xanthippus laughed bitterly. ‘Is this how we have to behave to do what is right?’ he asked. ‘By Poseidon, I hate the Spartans.’

  It was dark, but not yet late, and there were people at most of the fires, eating and drinking. The whole of the beaches of Salamis had something of the air of a desperate festival.

  We walked together, mostly in silence. Xanthippus had decided that he didn’t like me, and yet he craved company. We were about to do a reckless thing that could dishonour us all. I could tell he had little stomach for it and I, in turn, didn’t like him much either, but we were allies.

  War is complicated.

  At his tents, we stopped. ‘Let me offer you a cup of wine,’ he said, with poor grace. He didn’t really want to offer one to me, I could tell, and I didn’t want his wine anyway.

  ‘No,’ I said. I had a mission, and I would need most of the dark part of night to accomplish it. ‘My thanks, Xanthippus,’ I said, although I owed him no thanks.

  ‘Is that the Plataean, my dear?’ called a woman’s voice from the darkness.

  ‘Please keep your voice down, my dear,’ Xanthippus said to the tent.

  Agariste appeared from the tent door. ‘Arimnestos,’ she said, ­taking my hand. ‘What a pleasure to see you.

  ‘He is on an urgent errand and can scarcely linger,’ her husband shot back.

  Agariste waved a ladylike hand and a beautiful young Thracian girl appeared – dark hair piled on her head and a tattoo of a horse inside her wrist that touched me. The Thracian girl smiled and poured me wine – wine I didn’t need – and like the Thracian woman, it was unwatered and very strong.

  A stool was placed behind me.

  ‘I really must be away,’ I said.

  Agariste nodded. ‘Of course, but this will only take a moment,’ she said. ‘Hipponax is your son?’

  ‘Of course!’ I said.

  ‘But you have no wife,’ she went on.

  ‘My wife died,’ I said.

  ‘Euphonia – yes. A most elegant and well-bred young woman. We were all surprised when she chose you.’

  Well, what do you say to that?

  But Agariste smiled in the near darkness. ‘I understand her better now, perhaps,’ she said. ‘Jocasta speaks very highly of you. Very highly indeed.’

  I shook my head, far more confused by one Athenian oligarchic matron than by all the manoeuvres of the Persian fleet. ‘Jocasta?’ I asked.

  She looked at me, her eyes narrowed. ‘The lady wife of Aristides?’ she said, her voice rising.

  ‘Of course,’ I said, feeling slow.

  ‘She is here, now,’ Agariste said. She smiled at her husband, but it was only to make him feel as if he was included in the conversation.

  I really had no idea where all this was going. I rose to my feet and gave the Thracian girl my cup. Really, it was just an excuse to look at her.

  She wasn’t looking at me, either. There’s age for you.

  ‘We have decided that it is time for you and Cleitus to end this foolish quarrel,’ Agariste said.

  ‘Of course,’ I answered. I smiled. ‘I really must go. I have a duty to perform. Perhaps your husband can explain.’

  ‘Well!’ she said. She also rose to her feet. ‘I shan’t keep a guest who is so very anxious to leave, but really!’

  Xanthippus accompanied me a few steps into the darkness. ‘I apologise for my wife,’ he began.

  ‘Please!’ I said. ‘Please explain to her why I must go – I think she sees me as some sort of barbarian.’

  I thought it was possible that Xanthippus, for all his democratic politics, also saw me as a bore and a bumpkin. Or as a notorious killer with a very thin veneer of manners.

  Most of the time, that’s a fine reputation to have.

  I slipped away, kicked off my sandals, and ran across the beach to my ships.

  Leukas was the best small-boat handler. We chose thirty oarsmen, the best men, and I took Ka. A well-shot arrow might save us, but no amount of sword work was going to save anyone. It probably took us an hour to get that little triakonter to sea.

  We ran west along the beaches to the headland and there we picked up Siccinius. He was waiting on the beach with Themistocles, and they embraced, and then Themistocles came aboard for a moment and clasped my hand. We unstepped the mast and while we waited we muffled every oar, which made them heavier but almost completely silent.

  Then the great man stepped ashore and we put our bow towards Piraeus and rowed. It was not a long row. We stayed close to the island of Psyttaleia for as long as we could and then we pulled almost due east into the harbour mouth. It was terrible and dark; and very strange to enter a mighty harbour with no people. It had the feeling of a trap.

  We were very cautious, and it took us an hour to find a landing spot.

  Siccinius was shaking with nerves. I went ashore with him.

  ‘I can do this,’ I said. Except that I could not, because half the court and all the major Persians knew me. It was a daft notion: the Great King would probably recognise me.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, they’ll know who I come from.’

  That was enigmatic and perhaps a little scary.

  ‘I could go with you,’ I said.

  He paused. He was a brave man, going to do a terrible thing that was almost certain to get him killed. I had all the time in the world to make him feel better about it.

  He looked at me. ‘What I don’t understand,’ he said slowly, ‘is why a man of your reputation would do this.’

  I knew my role. ‘I agree with your master,’ I said. ‘It is better this way.’

  Siccinius let go a breath. ‘I was born a free man,’ he said. ‘If it were me, I’d die fighting the Great King rather than face again the life of a slave.’

  I really admired him, but the man I was playing needed to feign disgust and impatience. ‘We’ll see when you have carried our message,’ I said.

  ‘I’m ready,’ he allowed.

  I walked a few paces with him.

  ‘If this succeeds,’ I said, ‘I’ll see to it that you are freed.’

  He paused. ‘You have a great reputation as a freer of slaves,’ he said. His voice was – better. ‘Thank you. I would love to be free. Even if my freedom comes at such a price.’

  He walked off into the darkness.

  What he carried was a message from Themistocles to the Great King.

  The message was wholly accurate. On four sheets of wax, Themistocles laid out, in my crisp Persian, the dissent and despair of the Greek fleet. He told the Great King the whole of the truth – that the fleet would break up the next night, in the dark of the moon, and run for the isthmus.

  Themistocles offered to lead the whole of the Athenian and Aeginian contingents to change sides if the Great King would accept Athens and Aegina as allies and friends.

  And I had agreed to it.

  Within an hour, Siccinius was b
ack, frightened and angry. ‘I can’t find anything but military posts,’ he said. ‘I’ll simply be taken and enslaved or killed.’

  This had, I confess, always seemed to me to be the weakest part of the plan, getting Siccinius to the Great King.

  Let me explain – I see your confusion.

  We didn’t know where the Great King was camped. That may sound as if we were blind, but Attica is vast and the King’s army, despite its size, was not so large. We knew from spies and refugees that Mardonius had led some cavalry as far west as Megara and we knew that Masistius had another body of cavalry north, by Marathon, probably to reap the symbolic victory there. But the Great King himself had watched the destruction of the Acropolis and then moved north, or so we thought. No one knew. We didn’t think he was with the fleet. One of Xerxes’ few real errors in the whole of his campaign in Greece was to treat his fleet as auxiliary to his forces instead of as a major contributor.

  I hadn’t expected to have to work hard to betray the Hellenic world, but now it seemed that I would.

  I went ashore again, hung a sword over my shoulder, put on a heavier chlamys borrowed from Giannis, and waved to Brasidas.

  Brasidas came ashore. He looked at me by the starlight, his face almost formless.

  ‘What are we doing here?’ he asked.

  It was past midnight and we had until the darkness lifted to deliver the slave to the Great King.

  ‘We need to get this man to the Great King,’ I said. ‘You speak Persian; I speak Persian. You know the former Spartan King; I know the Great King. If we tell the guards that we intend to betray the Greek fleet, we will be believed.’

  Brasidas fingered his beard. ‘And do we?’ he asked in his Laconic manner.

  By which he meant Do we indeed intend to betray the Greek fleet?

  It can be difficult to be a commander. The process of command – the habit of requiring obedience instead of discussion – can erode a man’s finer sentiments and his judgement, too. In addition, or perhaps first, the position of command settles a yoke of responsibility on the commander, so that he must make decisions that will cause pain and death and he must accept the consequence.

  Yet, when leading Greeks, who almost to a man seek the undying glory of Achilles, it is seldom a moral question. You take them where they can fight, and they fight.

  But in this matter, only I knew the truth. We had deliberately kept Siccinius from the truth – a slave will invariably betray a secret, if he feels he can derive advantage from it. Did I have the right to keep Brasidas from the truth? Brasidas, who had sacrificed a year of his life to raise rebellion in Babylon? Who had left his mess and his country because he felt that the Kings had made a dishonourable decision about Demaratus?

  I leaned very close. I said, ‘No. Trust me.’

  The Spartan nodded. ‘So,’ he said. That was all.

  What I am telling here is that, when you come to the point, there is no substitute for the absolute trust of your people, and you can only earn that by working to keep it every day. Seckla and I have a number of jokes about the Long War: about where and when it was won and lost; sometimes we say that we won the Long War with a load of tin from Alba, and sometimes we think that we changed the world on a beach in Syracusa. But one of the pivotal moments of the war was when Brasidas accepted, with a single question, that mission.

  We weren’t even quiet. The three of us walked up the main street from Piraeus, deserted but for a pair of dogs who followed us. I confess that I fed them – they were so sad, so abandoned by their people. They seemed to me to embody the spirits of the household gods of Attica.

  At the old temple of Demeter, the Persians had a guard post just at the base of the steps, right on the road. As I had hoped, it was a large post and manned entirely by cavalrymen.

  I stepped up boldly. ‘Hello!’ I called out in Persian. ‘Gentlemen, I need an escort!’

  They sprang to arms with the guilty alacrity of men who have been playing knucklebones while on duty. We were surrounded and stripped of our weapons, but not manhandled.

  ‘I would like to speak to an officer,’ I said.

  ‘Silence, slave,’ snapped one of the Persian cavalrymen. He slapped me with his riding whip – not particularly hard, but it stung me all the way to my soul, and I thought, this may be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.

  ‘We have a message for the Great King,’ I said, and got hit again.

  Brasidas grunted.

  Siccinius was silent.

  One of the Persians put a hand on my tormentor’s shoulder. ‘We were told to watch out for traitors,’ he said.

  ‘Balls, we were told to watch for spies. Greeks are all liars anyway,’ my guard said.

  Brasidas shot me a look, which suggested to me that he thought it was time to try and break away.

  Looking at them, I didn’t think so. They were alert, and I had reason to know that the Persian elite cavalry were among the best soldiers in the world. Two of them had their bows strung and arrows on their bows, their thumbs cocked round the string in their strange draw.

  I gave Brasidas the smallest of head shakes.

  Siccinius summoned his courage. ‘I come from the Lord Themistocles,’ he said.

  I think my guard was one of those who simply like to hit people; he had that look to him, and his riding whip shot out and caught Siccinius in the face, but the smaller guard caught his arm.

  ‘Don’t be an arse, Archarnes!’ he said. He stepped between us. ‘Who sent you?’ he asked.

  ‘Lord Themistocles,’ I said.

  ‘He’s lying,’ said the bully. ‘He’s only saying that because the other Greek said it. Split them up, beat the crap out of them, and we’ll get some answers.’

  ‘Ask yourself why we all speak Persian, then,’ I spat. My upper lip was split and already throbbing from the whip blow.

  My ‘friend’ raised his whip again, his face flushed in the torchlight. But the smaller man stayed between us.

  ‘He insulted me,’ raged the bully.

  ‘Shut up, Archarnes!’ said the smaller Persian. He went to the steps of the temple, picked up a horn, and blew it.

  Almost instantly there were two answering horns. He blew again – a long call.

  Archarnes came over and kicked me in the shin. As I started to fall, he struck me again with his whip.

  ‘Never take that tone with a Persian, slave,’ he said.

  I lay on the ground and thought of how I’d kill him.

  If I ever got free.

  Hoof beats heralded the next phase. An officer came, had a whispered conference with the smaller cavalryman and nodded sharply.

  ‘Which one claims to be from Themistocles?’ he asked. He butchered the name, but to be fair, the Greeks were not so good at Persian names, either.

  ‘They all do,’ spat Archarnes.

  ‘Then I’ll take them all,’ said the officer. He chose four cavalrymen from the troop at the guard post and they roped the three of us together and took us up the hill towards Athens.

  At a run.

  They were all mounted on fine horses and we were running at the ends of ropes. I fell once and hot pain went through my knee. Siccinius fell several times and was dragged a bit. Brasidas simply ran. If I had been a Persian, I’d have identified him immediately as the most dangerous man among us.

  To be honest, I was cold, and afraid. I knew we’d made a terrible error. I would greatly have preferred to die fighting than this humiliation, and I had wounded fingers, a bad cut on one leg, and months of constant fighting, poor sleep, and endless fatigue. I was not at my most heroic. As we ran up that hill, my breath burning in my lungs, I cursed Themistocles for a fool.

  And myself as well. It always hurts most when you have no one to blame but yourself.

  At the Piraeus Gates of Athens there is a small temple of Nike
and an even smaller temple of Aphrodite; really just a statue in a niche. But the temple of Nike was the headquarters of the guard, with fifty horses tied outside and a substantial number of slaves and messengers attached, even in the middle of the second watch of the night.

  We were questioned as soon as we were brought into the torchlight of the headquarters, and those were cursory questions. I could tell that neither of the junior officers barking at us cared a whit for our answers. Then we were taken out of the headquarters, past the city walls, and put into a house – it had, in fact, been a brothel. I knew the neighbourhood well enough. The house was full of prisoners, mostly very old men.

  There was a woman who had been raped so often she could not speak.

  There were two male children who were completely silent, their faces closed.

  Bah! I shan’t say more. No army is composed of priests and phil­osophers, but this was grim even by the standards of Ionian piracy. Someone had beaten one of the old men until his nose was smashed flat and his skull broken, yet he was alive.

  We three, despite our bruises, were the healthiest people in that house. Siccinius, who was growing on me as a man, found the covered well, and the three of us raised water and took it to all the battered people who would accept it.

  I looked down into the well’s cistern and glanced at Brasidas.

  He nodded.

  We could jump into the cistern and, with a little luck, escape. Many of the houses in this quarter shared common cisterns – big commercial establishments had them cut back into the hillside.

  Or we’d drown in the darkness.

  Siccinius was trying to coax the woman to take water when the guards returned. There were four of them, and they simply opened the door and shouted for us in Persian.

  ‘All three Greeks who speak the tongue!’ a man called. ‘If I have to come and find you, you won’t like it.’

  I remember, again, locking eyes with Brasidas. I wasn’t sure whether to be pleased they’d come for us, or terrified.

  We left the house. I suppose I thought we’d be brought back after questioning.